


what should i bring or leave behind?

by Anonymous



Series: a feeling's not a thing you own [6]
Category: Sanders Sides (Web Series)
Genre: Depression, Gen, Hospitalization, Moral Dilemmas, Suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-20
Updated: 2019-10-20
Packaged: 2020-12-27 02:50:13
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,588
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21111458
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: Patton is dead, but, against all odds, Thomas isn't.Joan and Logan kind of want to keep it that way.





	what should i bring or leave behind?

**Author's Note:**

> look. if you've read this series, you know what's up. i am sleepy, and i did not intend for this story to go this way. it is almost ten o'clock. i have a dog who is expecting me downstairs. i am experiencing gender dysphoria, which means that if i've messed up joan's pronouns, i'm going to be really mad at myself, because we both use the same pronouns
> 
> content warnings: light religious discussion. possible sacrilegious content on behalf of remus. which is. definitely not a thought torn directly from my own brain. oh my gosh, what would that look like? also, a lot of suicide warning, and possibly medical inaccuracies? by which i mean, i have no idea how american hospitals work

Eyes open.

Or, they don’t, because there are no eyes _to_ open. There is one person, split into pieces. There is part of something that is greater than what is not incomplete alone.

There are about five or six presences. All of them can mould themselves together; all of them are part of Thomas. It’s like fusion, in Steven Universe.

The thought of the cartoon is snapped up by a few of the presences, which grow somehow in the space that is not space. The admiration of the technique of animation – all of those pictures shown so quickly that they seem to move – is taken by another. The passive thought of Disney is absorbed by three of them.

So far, the largest presence also seems like the smallest. He’s a helium balloon. What’s inside him is lighter than air, but he still takes up so much overwhelming space in the endlessness. Could Thomas be blown up like a helium balloon? Would he explode, scattering viscera everywhere?

Another presence, so much like the one that feels like passion and blood, snaps up that idea. Most of the others recoil from him, shrinking back, before settling back into their previous theoretical positions.

What is real or unreal about this place? Something ethereally solid reaches out, probing into the concept of their existence. They think, therefore, they are, correct? Indigo swells a little in a way that could be a glowing light, if it was visible.

Does the greater thing that they add into think? If Thomas doesn’t think, do they? Are they dead, or will they one day hear a sound again?

A spoken word and they all become greater. Smooth movement glows gold with a calming hum. A trill, a riff, a song, and something sparks.

Faces flickering, of family and friends and the reflection in the bathroom mirror (that thought is taken and hidden in coils). Emotions scatter like leaves in the wind, and they’re all gathered into the forming ideas of shapes, because, if they don’t try, then there’s nothing left of him.

Who is he?

Thomas.

Thomas’s emotions dissipate. They shrink down. Shrivelled like raisins.

In a blur of puke, they all see what else is shrivelled.

Most of the things that they assemble are memories. Memories are what make a person, after all, kind of. What is a person, if not a collection of traits and experiences, each moulded by the other, that form an individual? A person is, figuratively, a puzzle of a life lived, one of them indicates. Another adds that a lot of Thomas’s figurative pieces are missing.

Under a clear blue sky, something tells them that they’ll just have to make new pieces. It’s quickly drowned out by the weight of more memory.

Logan. Virgil. Roman. Remus. Ethan.

Thomas.

* * *

The mix of sleeping pills and painkillers that Thomas had taken would have been deadly without medical attention. Either his liver could have shut down, or it could have successfully purged the toxins in a flood of vomit which Thomas would have choked on.

It was all over-the-counter stuff that Roman had ordered in Thomas’s state of mania, contained in little plastic bottles and blister packs with long words on the labels. Logan had recited those words while calling Joan, and, even though they’re all quietly pretending that they don’t exist in the hospital, he still seems a little puffed with pride.

None of them talk, or offer suggestions for what Thomas should say to his parents, until his mother asks if Thomas knows that the overdose could have killed him.

Then, in response to the stupid, likely rhetorical question, Roman had started to say, _“Yeah, that’s the _point_.”_

With a twist of his wrist and a folding of his fingers, Ethan holds Thomas’s tongue, leaving his mother to cry until one of his brothers took her away.

What was he supposed to say?

“We could have lied,” Virgil growls from his perch on the chest of drawers and files next to Thomas’s bed. The others in the short-term psych ward didn’t pay any attention to him at all.

“I thought that lying was wrong, Virgey-Virge,” replies Remus. He’s leaning against the metal foot of the bed, where the basic files on Thomas were left to hang for easy access by the doctors and nurses. He flicks through the pages like it’s the world’s worst flipbook.

Ethan stands between them both. Like the both of them, he’s wearing his normal outfit, the one he first showed himself to Thomas in. To an outsider, he’d look weirdly misplaced in the hospital, like a costumed character who should be entertaining the children. Thankfully, he remains imperceptible for everyone who is not Thomas.

“Remus, now is not the time to remind everyone of our past antagonism,” he says, his voice calm but firm, like how Logan addressed the core sides when they only numbered four, no more and no less. “Even disregarding that, it was technically a lie. Logan?”

From one of the now-vacated chairs beside Thomas, the other being inhabited by Roman, Logan speaks up. “Yet again, Thomas’s lack of speech could be seen as a lie of omission. By not saying anything, he allowed his mother to draw her own conclusions.”

There’s a pause, where Thomas continues to pointedly stare at the ceiling. Someone two beds over screams about not wanting to take their medication. Virgil tugs on his hood, pushing his fringe further into his face.

“It appears that, despite our lack of speaking, she still drew the correct conclusion.”

“No sher, Shitlock.” Remus has turned around, balancing himself on his stomach and with his hands on the metal bars of the foot of the bed. “Roman is thinking about hanging himself on the curtain rail.”

Virgil and Logan both turn to look at Roman so quickly that Virgil’s neck cracks and Logan’s glasses almost fly off of his face. Still, though, their little Princey is just curled up in his chair, eyes closed.

“He isn’t,” says Ethan. He might not sound sarcastic, but that doesn’t mean he’s not partaking in his old habit of speaking in opposites all the time.

“Is Remus or Ethan telling the truth?” Logan asks, softly.

Roman just responds with a groan.

“I need an answer, Roman,” he continues, still gentle and calm. “Are you still feeling suicidal?”

At that, Roman’s head jerks up. His teeth are bared, slightly, and one eyebrow is raised. “Oh, of course not! Thomas and I just reached the conclusion that we’re better off dead, but since that clearly went so well-” He pulls one arm out of the ball that he’s curled himself into so that he can gesture around the room, as flamboyantly as he would if he was standing in front of Thomas’s TV. “-I’ve decided that life is suddenly worth living.”

Purposefully off-key, in an ear-splitting falsetto, Remus warbles, “_I dreamed that love would never die!_”

“He was being sarcastic, wasn’t he?” Logan asks.

Virgil and Ethan both nod.

“_I dreamed that God would be forgiving!_” Remus breaks off from his song to giggle. “But God _won’t_ be forgiving, because killing yourself is wrong. It means you go to Hell!”

“Please can you all just _shut up_?” Thomas growls, so quietly that he might not have made a sound at all.

Until the nurse comes by to tell Thomas about how he will be released after two more days, during which time he will be given mental health assessments, the only sound is Remus massacring the rest of Les Misérables.

* * *

After completing several pages of self-assessment forms, that would doubtlessly be scanned over and disregarded for the sake of a stranger’s impression of him, the curtains around Thomas open and close, because that’s when Joan is finally allowed to walk in.

“Alright, it’s a Sanders party in here,” they say, glancing around at the array of sides.

Virgil sits on Thomas’s pillow, with his arms wrapped around his centre’s waist. Deceit, or, well, Ethan, is on the opposite side of his bed, sitting on Remus’s feet, who, in turn, is sitting on the bed foot, leaning back, and grinning at Joan.

Logan is in one of the chairs, but the other is empty. It takes a moment for Joan to spot Roman on the floor between Logan and the bed, leaning against the bedside table. His prince costume lies over his knees like a blanket. Instead, on his top, he wears the same hospital gown as Thomas.

They nod to Logan. If it weren’t for him, Thomas wouldn’t be alive to wear a hospital gown right now, because he would be dead.

Holy _fuck_, Thomas would be _dead_ right now. All that would be left of him would’ve been a corpse and a video that beat out _Dealing With Intrusive Thoughts_ as the most upsetting thing on Thomas’s channel.

Talyn had kept crying, which Joan couldn’t blame them for. By now, two days later, they’d promised to keep away from media that could be covering the issue, and they were spending a lot of quality time with their rats, some snacks, and a _Lord of the Rings_ marathon that both they and Joan knew they wouldn’t really be watching.

Thomas tilts his head a little, and then, when Joan’s fairly certain that he’s just going to keep staring blankly, says their name.

“Joan.”

And, shit, there go the floodgates. The floodgates are their tear ducts. Just saying.

“Holy fuck, Thomas! What the hell were you thinking?” They lean in and grab his hands, and Virgil reached out with one of his own to entangle all three of their sets of fingers together. Joan takes a breath through their nose, feeling their chest rise and fall, then says, “I’m sorry. I get what you were thinking, I’m just…”

“Not ready to be out of a job?” a voice that they almost think is Thomas himself asks. But, no, Thomas’s voice was far more raspy and tired when he spoke, even with Logan probably making him drink at least a sip of water from the glass at his bedside every five minutes.

“Don’t be a dick, Roman,” Virgil grunts.

“We’re all a little… Out of sorts, I believe the phrase is,” adds Logan. “We know that you care for Thomas, but-”

“Patton’s dead!” Remus exclaims, swinging himself into a standing position and waving jazz hands above his head.

Joan’s hands tighten into fists for a moment, before he remembers that he’s holding Thomas’s hands. “_What_? How?”

Thomas pulls his mouth into a really bad excuse for a smile. “Yeah. My emotions are literally dead.”

“As dead as we can be,” Logan interrupts. “We are, after all, metaphysical human beings.”

“I mean, I have some emotions,” Thomas continues. “There’s anger for no apparent reason. A thing that’s apparently mania. My personal favourite’s disappointment in myself for not feeling emotions, though.”

“Jesus _fuck_,” Joan groans. They drop the hand that Virgil isn’t also holding so that they can cup the back of Thomas’s head and press their foreheads against each other, like they could transfer some of their emotions to him. Happy thoughts, like weird in-jokes, and hours spent playing stupid improv games in front of a camera for videos they’d never upload.

“Okay, but do you actually think that Jesus fucked?” Remus pipes up.

“He’s on the curtain rail,” says Ethan. “I wish that I was lying, but he’s on the curtain rail.”

“Seriously, did the Messiah die a virgin? ‘Cause there was this one English king, and he wanted the church to stop judging him for having a boyfriend, and he basically said that Jesus was gay for John. Do you think they fucked?”

“He’s not trying to hang himself, so that’s good, I suppose.”

“Ooh! How about this? _Disciple orgy_!”

“Retroactively, my previous statement has become a lie.” Ethan lets out a single, humourless chuckle. “I suppose I _am_ still Deceit, after all.”

Joan rolls their eyes, as if they’re literally looking for a change of subject. “I haven’t deleted the video, but it’s on private. People are reuploading it, though.”

They watch Thomas blink a few times, before his face falls. “Oh shit, the video! I’m sorry, Joan. I couldn’t bring myself to leave a note. Oh my _God_, kids are gonna see it.”

“It’s okay, Thomas,” they reply, bumping their head against his again. “I understand. I sent out a tweet on your phone, so they know you’re alive, but…”

They slump, pressing their ear against the thud of Thomas’s heartbeat.

“I was so scared. I’m still scared. I’m just so fucking glad that you’re alive, even though I know you’re not okay, so I’m not gonna ask if you are. If Logan hadn’t called me and put you in the recovery position, I don’t know what I’d be doing right now.”

“Picking out funeral suits, probably.”

“Roman, while we do value your creativity, your current input is…” the last word drags out in a little hiss through Ethan’s teeth. “Not your best work.”

“I didn’t put Thomas into the recovery position.” Logan’s voice is a little higher than usual.

“Oh, fuck you, Deceit!” shouts Roman, jumping to his feet. “Just because you’re a deluded jackass with no regard for what’s best for Thomas and an obsession with pretending everything’s okay, doesn’t mean you get to be a jerk about my coping mechanisms!”

“Your coping mechanism was driving Thomas to suicide,” Ethan retorts. “I think that we all have the right to be a bit pissed off about that.”

When Roman throws an arm out, Joan looks to where he’s pointing, and. Yep.

“Remus is literally hanging himself! Right here!”

“I can’t tell if it’s ironically hilarious or in incredibly poor taste,” muses Virgil.

Logan snaps his fingers, and Remus falls to his butt on the ground, his conjured rope having vanished.

“Poor taste,” he says. “Also, Roman, Ethan is working to try and help us recover from this mental illness. You, however, are doing your best to exacerbate it. Ethan’s response to your statement was very kind, in comparison to what he could have said and to what you _did_ say, and I do not believe that it counts as being, as you say, _‘a jerk’_ regarding your coping mechanisms.”

Roman’s feet are shoulder-width apart, stabilising him as he pulls at his hair and _roars_. It’s animalistic; it’s desperate. It’s… It’s kind of scary.

“This is why we should be dead! You’re all just… Serious _assholes_!”

Deceit stands up right next to Roman. Joan watches him, and how his scales shine in the unflattering fluorescent light, and how different he looks from Roman, and Logan, and Thomas, even though they’re all physically the same.

For a moment, the two of them stare at each other, like they’re squaring up to fight. Roman turns away after a moment, snarling, “Remus! Shut up!”

“What?” he asks, from where he’s lying on the floor, with his hand-

Joan is going to try to forget that they saw that, but their own intrusive thoughts now have something new to force upon them when they close their eyes.

They flip off Remus, who, when he spots the ace ring on their middle finger, actually says, “Oops! Sorry.” and zips up his denim booty shorts.

“Ah. I see.” Logan’s voice is calm and clipped.

“See _what_?” Virgil’s voice, however, is not.

“We all remember how Roman and Remus used to be the same being, encompassing all of Thomas’s creativity, yes?”

Joan squints at him. “Yeah? Who’s this recap for?”

Logan waves a hand. “Never mind,” he says. “Are we all aware, at least, on some subconscious level, that the splitting of the two of them was due to the morals learnt from Thomas’s parents, teachers, and the Church?”

“You are acknowledging that Morality was at fault for Creativity splitting?” asks Ethan. His voice seems, well, almost hesitant.

Calmly, Logan replies, “Yes, indeed, I am.”

“So now you’re just going to talk shit about Patton?”

When Virgil asks that question, his voice echoes in what Joan kept trying to call his Tempest Tongue. The name hasn’t really stuck.

After shuffling through a pack of vocab cards, Logan shakes his head. “I do not believe so. While Remus and Roman both split due to Thomas’s developing morality system, I don’t quite believe that Patton, or any of us, really, understood the ramifications of erasing the shades of moral greyness in such.”

“You’ve lost me,” says Remus.

“I’m kind of tired,” Thomas adds, with a little yawn.

“You can rest after I’m done explaining.” Logan’s voice seems a little faster than before. “Joan, are you listening?”

They nod. “You know I am, Logan.”

“Good,” he replies, “because you’re the one who is most likely to remember this.”

“Them?” asks Thomas. “Not me?”

“Yes, them. Get with the program, Thomas.” Logan flashes the vocab card before throwing it into nothingness and adjusting his glasses.

He begins to speak.

“As we were all growing up with Thomas, Patton was given one of the most difficult jobs, along with Ethan. He had to decide what was right or wrong, and, if he couldn’t cope, he would send the problematic aspects to Ethan, or, at the time, Deceit, to be repressed.”

“You’re calling my brother a problem?” snaps Roman.

“Please, listen, Roman. These things would remain repressed until Patton was in a calm enough place to take a longer time to work through them, or until a trigger pushed them into the open. A lot of things were repressed, _including_, Roman, our sexuality. You know how dangerous it can be to come out. Thomas needed to be in a better mental space in order to understand himself properly.”

“Hurry up and get to the bit where you shit on me, Teach!” Remus interrupts, draping himself over the foot of Thomas’s bed.

For a moment, Logan’s face is filled with revulsion. He looks from Joan to Remus, pointing at the latter. “Is- Is this-? I’m- I don’t understand.”

“It’s metaphorical. He means, like…” Joan gestures with their free hand, the one that used to be joined with Thomas’s and Virgil’s. “Insulting him.”

“He wouldn’t mind if you actually did it, literally,” Roman butts in from his chair. “He’d probably get off on it.”

For a second, Joan sees Logan’s eyes widen as Remus makes eye contact with him and licks his own lips. “Please do.”

“Please don’t,” they add.

“This all adds up to prove my point, though,” says Logan. “Patton started to fade away around the time that Thomas’s more repressed aspects started to make their way back into his life.”

“Like Remus,” Ethan murmurs. “And me.”

Logan takes a slow breath. “Yes, unfortunately. The stress about his sexuality, in combination with a high-stress job and hobby such as entertainment, especially in theatre and on YouTube, meant that there was less time for Patton to assess Thomas’s moral compass, as he was busy with his other jobs, such as short-term goals and keeping Thomas happy and calm.”

“So much repression.”

“Therefore, Thomas started taking time to assess himself with the three, then four of us. Patton, Roman, and I, shortly joined by Virgil.”

Virgil snorts. “Let’s be fair, I was interrupting so I could make Thomas’s life more inconvenient.”

At that, Logan shrugs, with a small smile playing on his lips for a moment. “And yet your input was, and still is, invaluable.”

Joan doesn’t need to look to know that Virgil is blushing. The only way that Thomas could blush more is if he were born ginger, because, well, yeah. Ginger people blush more. That trait extends to all of his sides. It’s kind of hilarious, or, it used to be, anyway.

“Still, as we all delved further into Thomas’s mind, sorting out different problems, the issues in Patton’s growth became apparent.” Logan’s voice has grown quieter, yet more weighted. It’s as if the whole curtained cubicle is a soundproofed room. “I think that, since he was so focused on keeping Thomas functional, he was unable to continue his growth in understanding more complex moral dilemmas. And so, when faced with something so simple, yet so complex, as _what makes a good person_, and if a person can truly be good or bad…”

“Burnout,” says Joan. “You think Patton suffered from burnout. Like, everything got to be too much for him to handle, metaphorically speaking, and he couldn’t cope.”

Logan nods.

“Great story.” Remus raises his arm up and swishes it around. “What does that have to do with me? And Roman, I guess.”

“Well, your separation was caused by a moral dilemma, and Roman, at his best, is mostly guided by what makes him happy and satisfied with himself, and what he thinks would make others happy,” replies Logan. “Therefore, it can be inferred that, without Patton to provide the core of Thomas’s emotions, and his strong thoughts on right and wrong, not to mention Patton’s burgeoning acceptance of Remus’s existence before he died, that Creativity might be recombining.”

Joan stares at Logan as they parse through his words. Then, softly, they say, “What the fuck?”

Thomas begins to snore in the bustling ward. Fuck. Joan was supposed to tell him that he was either staying at their's and Talyn's place, or they'd stay at his. Not that knowing what's happening with their best friend isn't a good thing! Just that, well...

This is going to be hell, isn't it?

* * *

Somewhere, the sky is clear and blue.

**Author's Note:**

> look. i didn't know logan was going to talk for that long. be nice to him
> 
> edited on the 21st bc i fucked up the editing last night!!! :D


End file.
